Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

body-heat stowed in the crumpled duvet.
Regarding ‘we have found ourselves, but lost each other’, true, this is not empirical but it is what I call in my longer
essay (that Andrew mentions in the opening of his blog on this topic [‘Empirical and Non-Empirical Identifiers’])
“philosophical discursiveness”, which limits poetic connotation to some extent, and is, therefore, as limiting as
empirical poetry is.
Andrew Shields
Jeffrey, I don’t think this point is very convincing: ‘isolated . . . they do seem less empirical’.
Such lines can be descriptive and empirical but also do other things, just as ‘his clothes are dirty but his hands are
clean’ can be literal but, as you point out, can also lead away from the literal.
That is, just because a poem contains empirical description, or even consists entirely of empirical description, that
does not mean that the poem cannot provide grounds for interpretation (as in my reading of Armitage in terms of
abstract issues of evidence).
I also keep coming back to the claim in your essay [‘Empirical and Non-Empirical Identifiers’] that “Night Shift”
contains no metonymy. But surely the poem is all about metonymy: the effects are being presented instead of the
causes. Almost all the details are metonymies for the absent person!
Jeffrey Side
Andrew, yes, some empirical lines do have some potential for a broader interpretation of them. That is not my point,
really. My point is that such lines are used by Armitage in such a way as to preclude the possibility for a broader
interpretation. Besides, each phrase follows on logically and coherently with the next one to produce a cohesive
shared meaning. This in itself inhibits plurality of meanings, to the extent that the poem can only be about his
missing his girlfriend while she is at work-as you touch on with your point about metonymy.
Andrew Shields
Well, Jeffrey, that pretty [much] sums up where we disagree: for me, a poem with a ‘cohesive shared meaning’ does
not “inhibit a plurality of meanings”, and for you, it does.
Still, it seems to me that the very fact that this entire discussion is a response to that particular poem belies your
critique of it! If it were such a crappy poem, surely it would not generate such an interesting discussion!
Jeffrey Side
Andrew, I think, though, that the discussion isn’t so much about the poem as our differing approaches to poetry. I
tend to go for a more heavily connotative and less lexically coherent type of poem than perhaps you do. Of course, it
is a matter of personal taste, and I’m not arguing that mine is better than yours or others’. I just find Dylan’s use of
language and turn of phrase more interesting than Armitage’s when it comes to the potential for large-scale
connotation.
All language is able to connote to some extent, so obviously there will be some [connotation] in Armitage’s poem. My
underlying point, though, is that there is more in Dylan, perhaps not in ‘Lay Lady Lay’ and the other songs
mentioned here, but in the majority of his considerable opus. I don’t know if this can be said of Armitage’s works to
date.
I don’t even think this is an issue that Armitage is concerned with. I think that he sees his poetry as communicating
clearly to a wide variety of people from all backgrounds, hence his unadorned use of language. Dylan, on the other
hand, probably just writes for himself, and if others like it that’s a bonus.
Andrew Shields
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